


You'll Be In My Heart

by songsofgallifrey



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, young loki, young thor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-19
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2019-05-08 20:24:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14701554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/songsofgallifrey/pseuds/songsofgallifrey
Summary: Based off an imagine prompt from imagine-loki on Tumblr. A scene like when Kala reassures Tarzan that they are the same and she loves him and he belongs in the family in the 1999 film. Young Loki (like the human equivalent of about 6 or 7 years old) discovers his heritage long before he was meant to, and Mama Frigga is there for him. Fluffy, fluffy nonsense.





	You'll Be In My Heart

**Author's Note:**

> As someone who has loved Tarzan for the last 19 years since it came out, I really loved writing this. I'd love to know what you all think!

Thor removed the furs and leather boots he had donned to go play out in the snow and tossed them on the floor of his bedroom, scattering the powder everywhere. Frigga stood at his doorway and frowned disapprovingly as the snow quickly began to melt, feeling frustrated knowing her sons were going to be tracking water everywhere before long. With a sigh she picked up the furs and hung them from the hook on the wall in the boys’ room where they were supposed to go. Then she noticed a particular lack of another fur coat, and looked outside through the window at the driving snow.

“Thor, where is your brother? He was supposed to come in when you did.” Frigga was struck with sudden worry; it was very much like Loki to go off on his own, but in this weather she had told her boys to stick together, even if they made trouble. With her husband deep in his Odinsleep she had her hands full enough as it was without having to keep her sons from killing each other.

The small blonde boy shrugged. “I dunno. He said he saw something and didn't want to come in yet.” Clearly unfazed by his brother's behavior, Thor went to his bed and took out a wooden sword from beneath his pillow, pretending to fight an invisible monster. 

The queen cursed under her breath, called for a handmaiden to stay with her elder son and ran to the throne room, conjuring her winter furs onto her body with her Seidr as she burst through the castle doors out into the blinding snow. 

“Loki!” she called, but the harsh wind carried her voice and scattered it into nothingness. “Loki! Loki please, if you can hear me, follow my voice!” 

Frigga lifted her skirts and ran out into the snow, the powder now halfway up her shins, searching desperately for a glimpse of Loki's black hair or his dark grey furs. She ran for what felt like hours, her wet hair soon freezing to her scalp and shoulders, her feet long since numb from the cold, and was almost ready to collapse from exhaustion and cold when she saw him.

Nearly a mile from the castle, her little Loki, his short raven hair plastered to his head with ice and his furs cast aside, sat on the ground in the middle of a clearing with the snow up to his waist. Frigga nearly wept with joy when she saw he was still alive. The boy was staring at his hands, and as the queen approached him she saw he had his sleeves pulled up and his skin was dark blue. Loki looked up at his mother with bright, fully red eyes, a tear falling from one eye and freezing on his cheek. When he let out a deep, shaking breath, it did not condense in the cold air. 

“What am I?” the young prince asked, and Frigga's heart broke hearing how small and lost and confused her son sounded. She reached out to brush off the tears that had frozen on his patterned blue face, and nearly jerked her hand back when she felt how cold Loki’s skin was. 

“You are my son, my dear child,” Frigga told him, trying to keep her voice as soothing as possible through her chattering teeth. “W-w-we need t-to go back h-h-home.” She unwrapped her fur shawl from her shoulders and placed it around Loki's body, immediately starting to shiver violently. They were both going to die out here if she didn't get him back to the castle.

Loki wore a vacant expression, but his eyes betrayed the turmoil within. He stared at the skin on his arms, tracing the marks on his left hand with the fingers on his right. Frigga could barely hear him when he chose his next question, his voice carrying an edge of what could only be disgust.

“But what more than that?”

Before the queen could answer, she heard the shouting of the castle guards looking for her. The Einherjar had followed her without her even knowing, so distracted she was by her search. Frigga sent up a signal with her magic, a burst of green light that stood out against the white snow, and she heard her guards shouting louder.  
With all her strength, she lifted Loki out of the snow under his arms and cradled his frigid body close to her. He was starting to warm beneath her fur shawl, but his skin had not yet begun to change back. Soon the guards reached them, and one took the prince into his arms, taking off back toward the castle at a run. “Take him to see Eir,” Frigga shouted to him, and that was the last thing the queen did before she fell on her side into the powdery snow and slid into darkness.

………

When Frigga awoke, she was in her bed, Eir the Healer on one side of her, her still-blue younger son on the other. Loki was holding her hand with his cold one. She was astonished to see his face; it had only been hours since she had found him in the snow, but he looked like he had aged a century. Her trusted Healer was taking her pulse, and she clucked at Frigga disapprovingly. 

“With all due respect, your Grace,” Eir began, using a mothering tone, “the next time one of the princes wanders off, please leave it to the Einherjar to handle it. They are trained to withstand extended periods of time in extreme temperatures. You, our precious and irreplaceable Queen, are not.” 

Frigga could not take her eyes off of her son. She didn't know why he hadn't turned back yet, as it had to have been exposure to the cold that changed him, and now they were sitting just ten feet or so away from a roaring fire. His natural form was beautiful in its own way, though. It suited his bone structure. She stroked the back of his hand with her thumb, and he finally looked up to meet her gaze. 

“Thank you, Eir, I'm quite well now,” she told the Healer, by way of a dismissal, and Eir took her leave to check on the sleeping elder prince. The queen knew that Eir would keep silent about Loki's condition, just as she had done from the moment Odin had brought him home from Jotunheim. 

Loki released her hand and rose from the bed to stand before the fire. The boy was so young, Frigga thought, too young to be dealing with the issue of his true heritage, but there was no herding this horse back into the stable. Loki was wise beyond his years most of the time, hardened and matured by the shadow his father and brother cast, and he knew something about him was different. She watched her son as he held his outstretched hand toward the fire, the scorching heat changing his skin to the pale Aesir flesh he had worn all his life. When Loki turned back to her he looked like his former self, his red eyes sliding back to an icy blue. 

“Am I cursed?” he asked, his little hands clenched tightly at his sides. His eyes showed the war waging behind them; familial and existential crises rolled into one. It was torture for Frigga to see her son this way.

“Of course not,” Frigga said gently, and pulled back the covers of her bed to get up and sit in the rocking chair she kept near the fireplace. She patted her thigh and Loki reluctantly came over to her to climb on her lap, something he hadn't done in decades. He couldn't look her in the eyes, instead choosing to stare at his lap.

“Papa said I don't belong in this family,” Loki whispered. It was a question that was not a question, something that Loki had thought himself through the years that hurt more hearing it from his father as though the Allfather had plucked it from his brain to hurt him.

Frigga could slap her husband, were he not in his Odinsleep. “Never mind what Papa said,” she assured him, and wrapped her son in her arms to hold him close again. He still felt cool to the touch, but not alarmingly cold. Loki frowned angrily and pulled away from her, his skin transforming back to a dark blue. For a moment Frigga had to admire Loki's ability to learn how to control the change so quickly.

“Look at me!”

Loki was breathing hard, clearly still shaken, and rightfully so. The muscles in his neck and shoulders were as tense as stone, and his jaw was clenched tight. Frigga softened her expression to contrast his, willing herself not to cry. 

“I am looking at you, and you know what I see?” Frigga took her son's face in her hands and leaned in close, unafraid of the cold, scaly feeling of his Jotnar skin or the gaze of his blood red eyes. “I see… two eyes, like mine. And a nose...somewhere.” She smiled and feigned confusion, then poked the young prince playfully on his blue nose, eliciting a smile from him. “Ah, here. Two ears,” she continued, and tickled Loki's ears, making the boy laugh despite himself. “What else?”

Loki peered down at his hands, the patterns cast into sharp relief by the firelight. “Two hands?” he suggested, and raised them up to place them palm to palm against his mother's. His smile faded when he saw the obvious difference between his cold, blue hands and her warm, pale ones. Frigga sighed, deciding to adjust her approach.

“Close your eyes, and forget what you see,” she whispered, and guided Loki's hand to rest above his heart. “What do you feel?”

Loki sat with his eyes closed for a few seconds in thoughtful silence. “My heart,” he said, and clutched at the fabric of his shirt like he was worried it would fly out of his chest.

“Good,” Frigga reassured him. She took his hand and placed it on her own chest, locking eyes with him.

The prince did not look away. “Your heart”, he said quietly, a smile starting at the corner of his mouth. 

The queen laid her hands in Loki's lap, palms up, summoning a bit of magic to create a small bundle of green light between them. Without having to be prompted Loki copied her, letting his identical magic dance with hers and combine to create a bright ball of light with their seidr.

“See? We’re exactly the same. You and I, your brother, your father - we're all the same on the inside. That's where it matters. You are our son, Loki, and we your family. Nothing will ever change that, or change how much you are loved.” Frigga pushed Loki's hair back and tucked it behind his ear, and he leaned into her hand.

Loki evidently remembered he never got an answer to his initial question, out in the snow. “What am I?” he repeated, much more prepared for the truth than before. 

“You were born on Jotunheim,” Frigga said, resolving to be honest with her son. “You were the youngest and smallest son of their king, Laufey. Your father found you abandoned after a battle, and brought you to Asgard to give you a loving home and raise you as his own son. He may not always show it - the Norns know that's true for all of us - but he does love you. We all do. You are no less a son to us or a prince to Asgard than Thor is.” 

Loki nodded. He still appeared to be less than convinced of his worth in Odin's eyes, but that was a battle that Frigga could not fight for him. All she could do was build him up so high in his sense of self worth that no one could tear him down. That was a lifelong journey, however, and it had only just begun a few hours ago. This was a wound that would take time to heal. 

“Does Thor know?” Loki asked timidly, and Frigga shook her head no. “Good. I don't want him or anyone else to know.”

“I think that's fair.”

Loki leaned into his mother's chest and they began to rock together in the chair. Frigga stroked his hair, and as his eyes closed Loki started to change his skin back. 

And for the first time in over fifty years, and ultimately the last time, Frigga, Queen of Asgard, held her youngest son as she rocked him to sleep in her lap, and tried not to think about how Odin would react to Loki's revelation when he finally awoke.


End file.
